Aliens Omnibus 4 Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also Available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Aliens™ Book I: Music of the Spears

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Aliens™ Book II: Berserker

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  Also Available from Titan Books

  THE COMPLETE

  OMNIBUS

  VOLUME 4

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS™ OMNIBUS

  VOLUME 1

  VOLUME 2

  VOLUME 3

  VOLUME 4

  VOLUME 5 (DECEMBER 2017)

  VOLUME 6 (JUNE 2018)

  VOLUME 7 (DECEMBER 2018)

  ALIENS: BUG HUNT

  THE COMPLETE ALIENS VS. PREDATOR™ OMNIBUS

  THE COMPLETE PREDATOR™ OMNIBUS (JANUARY 2018)

  DON’T MISS A SINGLE INSTALLMENT OF THE RAGE WAR BY TIM LEBBON

  PREDATOR: INCURSION

  ALIEN™: INVASION

  ALIEN VS. PREDATOR:

  ARMAGEDDON

  READ ALL OF THE EXCITING ALIEN NOVELS FROM TITAN BOOKS

  ALIEN: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

  ALIEN: SEA OF SORROWS

  ALIEN: RIVER OF PAIN

  THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATIONS

  ALIEN

  ALIENS

  ALIEN3

  ALIEN: RESURRECTION

  ALIEN: COVENANT

  ALIEN: COVENANT - ORIGINS (2018)

  ALIEN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

  ALIEN: THE ARCHIVE

  ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY

  THE ART OF ALIEN: ISOLATION

  ALIEN NEXT DOOR

  ALIEN: THE SET PHOTOGRAPHY

  THE COMPLETE

  OMNIBUS

  YVONNE NAVARRO AND

  S.D. PERRY

  TITAN BOOKS

  The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 4

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783299072

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783299089

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: June 2017

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  ™ and © 1996, 1998, 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Did you enjoy this book?

  We love to hear from our readers. Please email us at [email protected] or write to us at Reader Feedback at the above address.

  To receive advance information, news, competitions, and exclusive offers online, please sign up for the Titan newsletter on our website

  www.titanbooks.com

  THE COMPLETE

  OMNIBUS

  VOLUME 4

  BOOK I

  MUSIC OF THE SPEARS

  YVONNE NAVARRO

  In memory of Patty Wold, and music ended far too soon.

  “Miz Von, do you have time?”

  PROLOGUE

  He couldn’t believe she wouldn’t turn on the lights.

  For this occasion, Jarlath Keene had dressed in the best of his well-appointed wardrobe. He’d wanted to convey all the most important attributes—money, power, influence—and the brushed technosilk Paoletti suit he wore expressed all of that and more—as well it should for the fifty-five hundred credits it had cost him. In that respect, Keene’s strategy had proved disappointingly ineffective; while the room he stepped into was completely without light, there was a feeling of expansiveness to it that Keene had never encountered in an apartment or condominium before, especially in the small and hard to find buildings in overcrowded Manhattan. He felt immediately and utterly dwarfed.

  Illuminated only by the smoggy night sky shining through the penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the lightlessness of the interior made no difference; there was an undercurrent of opulence in the place, of decadence, that could not be disguised. Keene was drenched in it with every sense but sight: the carpet beneath his fine Italian pseudoleather loafers was thick and springy, the air laden with expensive perfume. He wished he didn’t have to grope his way across the room—it made him feel awkward and put him at a distinct bargaining disadvantage—but when he did, his fingertips sped across genuine silk and leather upholstery on the plush furniture. His desire to see made him check all the switches and lamps, but none of them worked. The frantic, faraway city lights did little to illuminate the condominium, but they would have to do. Obviously, the woman had the switches wired to some master control to which only she had access. It seemed he would have no choice but to conduct his business in the shadows.

  “Mr. Keene.”

  Her voice was soft and absolutely feminine, a whisper in the dark as delicate as a filmy scarf falling through the air. Keene caught himself before he whirled, turned instead with as much dignity as he could muster given the fact that he was standing in the dark and talking to a woman who seemed no more than a specter from across the room. He cleared his throat. “Yes, Miss—uh…”

  “Mina.”

  “Mina, then. Thank you for agreeing to see me.” Something about that sensuous voice made the perfectly tailored suit seem suddenly too small, too hot, despite the meticulously filtered and cooled air in the penthouse. “I know it was short notice—”

  “My time is quite valuable, Mr. Keene. What do you require?”

  Now she was only ten feet away from him, with her back to the row of huge windows. The silver-and-gold sprinkled expanse of Manhattan outside the glass faded to darkness behind her, outclassed by her inky silhouette. Only the woman’s eyes were visible, glitter-black, indescribably mysterious. Her hair, unb
ound in defiance of Japanese tradition, fell to her hips in a straight line broken only by its own muted shrine. Mina was a legend among the highest echelon men on earth—those with fortunes numbering in the billions—and a speculative fantasy to everyone else. Why had she agreed to see him?

  “I… have a proposal,” he managed. She said nothing but Keene imagined her raising an eyebrow in doubt—it would be finely shaped and the color of a midnight ocean over eyes like oil. “Of a business nature, of course. Regarding a… mutual acquaintance.” Keene twisted his neck, the collar of his custom-made shirt suddenly uncomfortable. “I would compensate you more than generously for your efforts.”

  Mina didn’t have to laugh for Keene to sense she was more than slightly amused at his clumsy verbiage. Like the scent of her perfume, his words hung in the air between them, though not nearly as pleasant as the fragrance of Charielle. “‘Efforts?’ What an interesting choice of words, Mr. Keene.” She sank onto a chair in front of the window, her descent very much like the smooth, flowing dip of a snake dancer’s rope… or maybe the cobra itself. Oddly, the condominium was completely silent, as though it had been thoroughly soundproofed. For some reason, Keene had expected soft background music, something romantic and hard to come by… a harp, perhaps.

  “Maybe,” Keene suggested silkily, “the… ah, gentleman with whom you are associated is not attending to your needs. There are more complexities than wealth that impact upon the liaison between a man and a woman, and I have sources who tell me that there is another gentleman of means who greatly desires your company.” Not bad, he thought. The lines were rehearsed and delivered almost flawlessly; only the gentleman part tripped over his tongue—no surprise there considering his personal feelings regarding the man in question. “I am prepared to grant you a substantial bonus for your consideration.”

  “I see.” Mina turned her face toward the window and now Keene could see her profile, barely: high forehead, small straight nose, the rounded line of lips above a classic chin. “And what of the man I leave behind, Mr. Keene? What of him?”

  Now Keene was thankful the telltale lamps were off, glad that there was nothing but moonlight to show the foxlike grin that tried to play across his face. He fought and won the struggle to keep any hint of glibness out of his tone. “Life sometimes deals unfortunate hands, does it not? One must learn to deal with the twists and turns of fate. Many people believe their destiny is preordained from the moment of birth.”

  “And you—what do you believe?”

  That voice, so sensual and sweet, like warmed dark chocolate flowing from a spoon. In itself it was dangerously distracting. “I—I believe a person controls their own life,” he said. “Everyone’s existence is unique, formed by the billions of experiences that happen to them and no one else.”

  “Really.” Mina was silent for so long that Keene had begun to think she’d lost interest, the allure of the deal just hadn’t done it for her. What would it take? he wondered. Drugs? More credits? He hadn’t quite drained himself dry for tonight, but it wouldn’t take much more to do it.

  “All right,” she said suddenly. “I’ll do it. But absolutely no one must know of our conversation tonight. If our meeting tonight became public knowledge, there would be… severe repercussions for both of us.”

  “You can trust me comple—”

  “And,” she interrupted, “you will have the bonus you mentioned converted into straight currency. But you will hold this currency until I call for it after I make the appropriate arrangements. Do not deceive me, Mr. Keene, or you will see an entirely different outcome to your wishes. It will not be pleasant.”

  “I assure you—”

  “You may leave now, Mr. Keene.”

  He opened his mouth to speak but a door opened somewhere behind him, sending his heart into a double set of jumping jacks within his chest. White light spilled into the room and stopped abruptly, as if it didn’t dare go beyond the stretch of its own three-foot rectangle.

  “My assistant will show you out. I will contact you when the time is right. Good night, Mr. Keene.”

  He wanted to protest, to demand the right to see her face-to-face. Hundreds of thousands of credits—his lifetime accumulation—were on the line here. Did he not have the right to look into her eyes and see exactly who she was?

  In the end, Jarlath Keene walked out of Mina’s apartment with his head held as high as he could, a proud duelist bested but not killed by the opponent. The feeling gave credence to his thirst for vengeance, and that was all the better. To him, Mina was the hair-line crack in the foundation, the kind that worked its way at a level far deeper than the trappings of mere money and business. He would sleep well tonight knowing that his hand had initiated that tiniest of fractures.

  With enough care and patience, a crack could become a chasm.

  1

  MANHATTAN, 2123

  Jarlath Keene’s office at Synsound Corporation was in “the Tower,” which was the generally accepted term for the offices of the vice presidents. While Manhattan was its home—and thus most lavish—office, Synsound was a huge company with bases around the world. There were thirty-four other vice presidents in this building alone, and Keene felt a lot like one old goat in a herd of younger ones; that he was fifth or sixth from the top of the ladder, depending on whose head was on the hierarchy chopping block at any given time, rankled him constantly. As far as he was concerned, his title of Vice President of Music Development meant nothing more than the fancy brass nameplate on the wall outside his office door and the private secretary who sat at a desk nearby. Every important decision that cost over two thousand credits still had to be submitted to someone else for approval.

  Dusk had fallen early tonight, brought on by a denser than normal layer of smog that mixed with the low-lying, dirty-looking clouds that spit a constant, gritty drizzle onto the miserable people stuck on the streets far below. Two more stories up and the floor-to-ceiling windows in Keene’s office would have been blocked by the sickly mist that signaled the first of the clouds. As it happened, Keene could still see—lucky him—the MedTech Building three miles away, the air encircling it cleared of vapor by the constant spikes of electricity that zapped through its private airspace, generated by a MedTech patented device that sterilized the air around the building’s intake vents before it ever reached the precious lungs of its employees. When MedTech had first put their little toy into operation six years ago, the electrical noise and static feed-back generated sound spikes on every master syndisc in the recording studios at midlevel in the Synsound Building during the first hour and damned near wiped Synsound out; only an emergency injunction had halted the Atomsterilyzer. The court battles had been hot, heavy, and expensive, and the outcome a split: MedTech could continue using its Atmosterilyzer—after all, it was only looking out for the health of its employees and the cleanliness of its medical testing facilities—but it was required to pay damages to Synsound for the re-recordings that were necessary, and before it could put its device back in use, it had to develop and install a force field system that would limit the electrical spikes that were output to its own grounds. Now the two companies were bitter rivals, and that suited Keene just fine. He hated them both.

  A knock and the sound of the oak-paneled door that led into his office being opened made him turn. “Yes?”

  “Damon Eddington is here to see you,” his secretary Marceena said stiffly. A stout woman in her early forties, she’d undergone a drastic change in her appearance last week. The previous reddish-brown pageboy hairstyle was gone, replaced by a style that was shaved and dyed black on the sides, then crowned with a mop of spring-tight orange curls. She might have had the skin on her face tightened and she’d definitely revamped her wardrobe; today’s new outfit was a tailor-waisted, short-sleeved green suit that looked as if the clothes had shrunk a few sizes while she was wearing them. Completing the ensemble was a purple scarf tied around her pudgy neck and tucked into the collar of the jacket. The whole thing
was atrocious.

  Thinking back, Keene was sure she’d done it to look more attractive, perhaps thinking that he would finally afford her more than his work-related attention. Not a very pretty woman to begin with, Keene thought that Marceena now looked like one of those antique squashed-face dolls that had recently become popular again and were now soaring in price. The idea that this had been her goal all along nearly made him chuckle aloud. In any event, when he hadn’t commented on her new look, Marceena’s demeanor had gone from polite to cool, edging on frosty. What did she expect—that he would ask her for a date? Not likely; Keene was a fit and healthy fifty-two going on thirty. He tried to feel pity for her but couldn’t; the truth was, he had more female companions than he knew what to do with already, and not one of them was over twenty-five. Did she really think she could compete? Her constant attempts were annoying.

  With Marceena standing in his office door as the go-between for him and Damon Eddington, it seemed like the perfect time to give her a reintroduction as to who gave the directives around here.

  “I’ll be with him as soon as I can.” He purposely turned his back on her and went back to gazing out the window.

  “He’s… quite upset,” Marceena said, a note of uncertainty creeping into her voice.

  Keene wanted to grin but didn’t; the reflection might give him away. “I said, I’ll be with him as soon as I can.” He intentionally let a note of nastiness cut through his words.

  Another moment of hesitation, then he heard the door close and let the smile flow over his mouth. Let her deal with Damon Eddington for a quarter hour, he thought. She wasn’t a stupid woman and she’d know it was Keene’s way of chastising her. Still smiling, Keene walked to his desk and began clearing it of the Duplidroids, Incorporated contract and acquisition proposal form—it wouldn’t do to have Damon glance down and see that Synsound was paying a single mutadroid manufacturer more than a million credits to re-create a band called Jane’s Addiction in time for the quarter-century mark in two years. With the evidence cleanly swept into the top drawer, he spent a few minutes tidying the contents of the other drawers in his desk, then finally sat back on his chair to wait. The minutes ticked by and Keene fought the urge to laugh aloud; he could well imagine what was going on in the secretarial suite outside his office.